NATO’s cells of expertise

Ruxandra Popa first came to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly as a research assistant, spending a few months at the organisation’s 30-strong Brussels secretariat helping with various projects. Shortly afterwards, she was invited to apply for a job as director of one of the assembly’s committees. ‘

‘When I was hired I was the youngest committee director in the history of the assembly,” she says. ‘‘I think I beat the current secretary-general by just a few months.”

Five years later she moved up again, becoming the assembly’s assistant secretary-general responsible for policy in March this year.

Born in Romania but brought up in France, Popa studied international law and political science in Paris, concluding with a master’s thesis looking at UN disarmament activities in Iraq. She continued this work on international security with a placement at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and it was her supervisor there who suggested an internship at the assembly.

She admits that her university courses had told her little about the NATO world. ‘‘I learned a lot about the specific NATO machinery on the job,” she says.

The assembly was set up in 1955 to provide a parliamentary counterpart to the intergovernmental NATO Alliance, and currently consists of 257 parliamentarians from the 28 NATO states. There is no formal institutional relationship between the two, but it is usual for the NATO secretary-general to address the assembly’s twice-yearly plenary sessions and respond to its policy recommendations.

The assembly’s policy work is carried out by five committees. The political committee deals with foreign affairs, and the defence and security committee covers the core NATO agenda, while the others have broader interests in the civil dimension of security, economics and security, and science and technology.

Popa was director of the committee dealing with the civil dimension of security, whose main interests were institution-building and democratic governance in NATO partner countries, civil protection and the fight against terrorism. Her role was to help the committee rapporteurs put together reports and accompany committee members on fact-finding missions, for example, discussing institution-building in the western Balkans or information security at US airports.

These missions helped her build a relationship with the committee members. ‘‘That’s how you get to know what they are interested in and that is also how you can have policy discussions with them,’’ she says.

It is a relationship that the members can draw on when security issues arise in their domestic work. ‘‘This is the core of our job,’’ Popa explains, ‘‘to be this cell of expertise that they can reach out to when they are discussing NATO-related issues in their national parliaments.’’

Policy co-ordination

As deputy secretary-general, her role is to co-ordinate the assembly’s policy output, and in particular to help the assembly leadership identify priorities. The job feels a little like working in a think-tank, but with a direct engagement with policymakers, she says. ‘‘It’s a great combination of work.’’

In addition to long-standing priorities such as Afghanistan, the western Balkans and broader transatlantic relations, the assembly is closely monitoring developments across north Africa. Its aim is to assess the security implications for NATO and build links with emerging powers, and Popa feels that the assembly’s expertise in the democratic control of armed forces could be of use as the situation stabilises. ‘‘The assembly has a lot of experience in that field from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the assistance we provided to the parliaments of central and eastern Europe.’’

Within Brussels, the assembly has regular contact with EU institutions, and the European Parliament is an associate member. ‘‘Every issue that we deal with has an EU angle,’’ Popa says.

Assembly members have also pushed for a focus on NATO-EU co-operation, although the political deadlock between the two alliances makes that a sensitive issue. ‘‘That needs to be resolved at the highest political level, but if the assembly can contribute to some extent, we try to do so,’’ Popa says.